


Post-Apocalypse Ficlets

by jb_slasher



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Birmingham City, Community: 31_days, Infection, Inspired by..., Liverpool, M/M, Spanish National Team, The Stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-18
Updated: 2007-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-10 08:30:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jb_slasher/pseuds/jb_slasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sami wanders the world, infection on his tail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"You kill them, we kill you."

In that sentence, he conveys the whole world. Because that's how the world works now. It is a wasteland, and people, they just walk it, trying to do the impossible: survive. Because here, you kill for food, you kill for a place to sleep, you kill to stay alive. (And it's not even the end of summer.) This is Darwin's real evolution: only the strongest survive.

So far, Sami has been strong. He has left behind weaker individuals. He hasn't killed them but he has left them to die. That's actually worse than killing them but so far Sami hasn't killed anyone and he doesn't plan to unless push comes to pull comes to shove.

He has seen a lot, too much even. The real dog-eat-dog world is no longer even relatively safe: everything and everyone is free territory.

He doesn't know how it came to this. He woke up one morning to this loud scream, followed by what he knows now to have been a gunshot from the backyard.

_Down in the yard, a man kneeling over a woman. (Susanna.)_

_The man running away with something the size of a small child. (Rico.)_

_A sinking feeling in his stomach. Sorrow consuming his mind. (Vomit on the grass.)_

_On the street people carrying guns, baseball bats, two-by-fours. (A kid sitting on the sidewalk, crying.)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "Racism in among future kings can only lead to no good." at LJ's 31_days community, July 7 2006.

_Racism in among future kings can only lead to no good._

There was a time when he saw it every day.

The future kings, they walk the earth now. Instead of spitting at each other, they walk together towards an uncertain future.

But there are those who go against this unity. They are the ones who still cling to that old battle of races. They don't care about the new world order, they hold onto the past, seething with hatred.

He steps forward with the rest of them. A pack of maybe twenty of them, most of them future kings.


	3. Everything Ends Eventually

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "Ignoring your conscience allows you to justify everything." at LJ's 31_days community, July 8 2006.

_Ignoring your conscience allows you to justify everything._

In this world, he can't trust his conscience. In this world, he has to do things that, according to his conscience, are wrong ( _Wrong, I tell you, WRONG!_ ). He has to do them to survive, to stay alive. He has always been aware of what is right and what is wrong but he can't trust that judgment anymore. The old world judgment will get him killed in the new world. (Or would have gotten him killed in the transition phase, anyway. The new world is beginning to shift into a more peaceful existence.)

He's older than most that survived the transition phase. He's sure most of them had to kill to survive. He almost had to: turned out it was enough to pull a man's eye out in a fight. He still doesn't like thinking about what he did (and he didn't even kill anyone) but he _had to_ do it to survive. (That thought comforts him enough to get through the night.)

Most of the survivors have settled down but he's different. He still wanders the new world which seems to be so much like the old one in appearance but yet so different when it comes to people. There are so few left now, and they seem to share a passion for unity. He reckons that unity is for the most part out of fear: people are just too afraid to be alone.

He's not afraid to be alone. What he is afraid of is that he will never find what he's looking for; something that he wishes survived the transition but can't be sure that it would have. His uncertainty, though, is not enough to stop him from continuing his search. He has nothing left of the old world, nothing to go back to, nowhere to go to stay.

So he's the drifter that makes his way into town, spends there a night or two, and is on his way at the light of dawn. Like he's mapping the towns of the new world.

There is no Liverpool anymore, no Paris, no Helsinki, no Moscow... no San Sebastian. That's where he had started searching; mid-summer; it was the most logical place to start.

It had been a dead end, nothingness, no one there. He had almost given up right there and then. But he hadn't: he had to be sure and finding nothing at one place didn't prove a thing.

For him, the old world had ended that February when IT had taken Rico. Nobody had really known what IT had been - IT had probably vanished during the transition just as quickly as it had appeared - but IT had seemed to target little children first, Rico along with them.

Some had called it simply "IT"; some had been oh-so-original with "The Virus"; the ones most paranoid: "Death Itself".

Then IT grew stronger, (hungrier, it seemed) and targeted teenagers, adults, anyone who was alive. IT took Susanna eight days after Rico. He hadn't been able to arrange a real funeral because the whole nation (and the whole fucking WORLD) had been in chaos, thinking this was the real apocalypse.

But the world in itself seemed like it hadn't changed at all, it was just the people who had changed. They were fewer and less stable, and that was the transition, the rest of the population adjusting and recovering from the loss of the other 99.9%.

His transition had included the rumors of lost mates. Mikael when he had passed through Birmingham, Torres on his way to San Sebastian... He still doubted the rumor about Torres. Torres had been in the best shape of his life. Though, IT had not been picky. Fernando might still have lost the fight.

At this point, he still can't be sure that anyone he once knew is still alive.

He is lucky, from a certain point of view. He's not too sure about calling being on a mission for something from his old world lucky.


	4. Know What You're Missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "The past is a well-closed book." at LJ's 31_days community, July 31 2006.

There is no past.

That gets Sami through the day. If he believes there is no past, he can lead them to a future. He cannot afford to lose his mind because of something that he has no control over. He gets these kids (kids, compared to him) through the day, forward another step, across another field.

The weakest cries out and falls to the ground.

"Keep moving," he tells the others; like The Virus is behind them, catching up.

"Get a move on," he pats the short boy, formerly of Chelsea strike-hood, who's turned to look at the hurt kid.

This boy is older than most of the others, has stuck with him since he left Liverpool behind. He kneels next to the lad.

"You all right?"

"I can't walk any further."

The lad is crying, wants to follow his leader but is unable to. His ankle is giving out.

"I'll carry you then. Grab on."

He lifts the lad into his arms and starts walking after the rest. He keeps his own pace so as not to wear himself out completely.

The lad is not light, though, and Sami has to rest more often. His breath catches easier, his arms go numb faster. He's not sure how long he can take care of this crew. He's lucky not to be coughing blood yet, but he knows he's coming closer to that point every second.

He knows he cannot save these kids. He can try all he wants but he knows he will never succeed. He can only guide them away from the past into a new future.

He just might be able to do that.


	5. Just About To Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 31 Days Theme Exchange 2006, for the prompt "and I asked him, do you know the way to..."

That's a rare sight for sore eyes. Sami welcomes it, hoping this is proof he hasn't gone mad on his way. He asks the tanned man directions to San Sebastian and gets them.

He must be closer than he even hoped. Soon he will find Xabi, safe, unharmed. He hopes, anyway.

He has come all this way, there better be compensation. Xabi better be alive or Sami will kill him himself. That trail of thought doesn't really help when all he wants is to just see Xabi again, to know he's alive and well. (Or at least alive if he should come to that unfortunate end.)

San Sebastian is only ten, twenty miles away; he should make it easily. Though that's not really what he's worried about.

He's started coughing something brown out of his lungs, ever since he left Bordeaux. It doesn't worry him yet. Much. Not that much. Okay, a lot. Brown means he's that much closer to the infection getting worse, meaning he might not leave San Sebastian alive. And if he doesn't find Xabi there, it means all those miles, his journey, has been in vain.

To have walked across England, then along the coast of France, for nothing.

Having done that, only to find out he should have died back home among friends instead of some foreign place, all alone.


End file.
